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Cyber-Shot test-shoot

Ajira.eu — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:28:18 +0200

While driving to the supermarket, I came across this little pond with water lilies. This posed the perfect opportunity to give my new Sony Cyber-shot a proper baptism. After a tiny bit of tweaking on the brightness and contrast in Lightroom, the picture came out quite nice I think.

Sony Cyber-shot

Ajira.eu — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:02:02 +0200

As I mentioned in the previous post, last Sunday was my 32nd birthday; but I don't celebrate it. This obviously also means I don't get many presents for my birthday. My parents gave me some clothing stuff and Daniel gave me a very cool light stand and shoot-through umbrella for my flashgun; but that's about it. But the best gift came from someone that I deeply admire and respect: myself!

About a year ago I bought the Kodak Zx1 pocket camera that records 720p video's on SD cards. While the camera works fine and is water resistant; it has some limitations that really got on my nerve, and so I decided to look for a replacement. The thing that mostly annoyed me was the fixed focus. While fixed focus is fine for most outdoor situations, it does get annoying if you want to get a slightly closer look at something and it just ends up as one big blurry blob on your photo or video.

My criteria were clear to me, and I started to look for a compact camera with autofocus and 720p video recording ability. My eye finally fell on the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W350. It's a tiny and very cute little point and shoot camera with a ton of features. It's about the size of a credit card, and it's only 16.7mm thick.

It has a 14.1 megapixel sensor and with the 35mm equivalent of a 26-105mm f/2.7-5.7 lens it gives quite decent image quality. Aside from decent pictures, it can also record 720p video with autofocus and even zoom ability. Especially the zoom is quite nice, because that is a feature that most compact point and shoot camera's don't have. The last feature I'd like to mention is that you can make panorama photos on this camera by just sweeping it from one side to the other. While the quality of the panorama photo is not the best, it's good enough for some funny pictures for websites.

I'm really happy with this little camera. Because it's so light and small, I can bring it with me at all times. So from now on my videos and "on the road" photo's will be much, much higher quality. Stay tuned for more of those

Thirty-two

Ajira.eu — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 10:24:51 +0200

July 11th, you know what that means. Yep... it's my 32nd birthday (hurray! ), and boy do I feel like an old fart!

One of the things that happens when you have your birthday, is that you receive a truckload of emails from websites and forums where you registered at some point in time, that wish you a happy birthday. The funny part is that half of these websites I can't even remember signing up on, and the other half I haven't visited in 5 or 6 years. But I'm still honored that they still remember me. Thanks guys! Whom ever you might be...

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find a large rock to hide under from relatives and neighbors that want to come over and congratulate me and pretend to enjoy my company...

Donkey Shelter

Ajira.eu — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 18:34:29 +0200

One of the things that I have in common with my mother, is that we both like donkeys a lot. So when my mom read in the newspaper that there was open house at a donkey shelter in the town of Baarle-Hertog, she immediately told me about it. I teamed up with my parents to check it out.

Click here for the full album.

The shelter currently houses 29 donkeys that were either neglected, abused or just very, very old. I think it's good that there are places like these that help the animals that were hurt by the beasts (read: humans).

Strobist

Ajira.eu — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 21:26:45 +0200

Even though my kit was more-or-less complete, it still felt like something was missing; and I don't like that. While making photo's in dark places it always bothered me that I had to use LED based flashlights to light up stuff, which gives horrible color casting. I wanted something better, and so I decided to get a flashgun.

A bit of searching and reading reviews later I ran across a "Strobist" beginner set for a nice price. "Strobist" basically means that the flash is not mounted on the camera itself, but is handheld or on a light stand. The kit includes a Yongnuo YN460-II flashgun and a Cactus v4 wireless flash trigger.The wireless flash trigger allows you to put the flash up to 100m from the camera, and it still fires on the exact moment that it needs to; really cool.

All in all it looks like a pretty decent kit, and the flashgun sure is bright enough! The cool (or bad) part is that I have to learn how to make photo's with a flashgun now, which seems like a fun challenge. I've seen some real nice photos that were made with off-camera flashguns, and I can't wait to make some of my own.